Explained: Why Justin Trudeau’s blackface costume is offensive and racist | Explained News, The Indian Express

Explained: Why Justin Trudeau’s blackface costume is offensive and racist | Explained News, The Indian Express

By Explained Desk |New Delhi |Updated: September 20, 2019 12:21:14 pm

Explained: Why Justin Trudeau’s blackface costume is offensive and racist

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is just the latest celebrity public entity in the centre of a blackface controversy. So, what is blackface, something that keeps appearing in both apparently lighthearted situations as well as in more serious ones?

There are pictures of him in an Arabian Nights party, dressed as Aladin in a turban and brownface makeup.(West Point Grey Academy/The Canadian Press via AP)

A month ahead of the October 21 election in Canada, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s carefully cultivated image of the posterboy liberal has been called into serious question by pictures and a video from the 1990s and 2001 that show him dressed in blackface and brownface.